分类： business

On Tuesday, Australian equity markets settled into a cautious holding pattern, with benchmark indices closing nearly unchanged as investors paused major moves ahead of a key Middle East ceasefire expiration set for Wednesday’s trading open. The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 slid a marginal 3.9 points, a 0.04% dip, to close at 8949.4, while the wider All Ordinaries index gained a matching fractional 0.03%, adding 3.1 points to finish the session.

The day began with an early upward push for stocks, but those initial gains evaporated as market participants braced for potential volatility linked to the pending expiration of the ceasefire between the United States and Iran. Industry analyst Tony Sycamore of trading firm IG flagged the Wednesday opening bell as a critical juncture for the local market, noting that the timing of the deadline could spark sharp price swings in early trading when markets reopen.

Sycamore explained that Tuesday’s muted session followed modest overnight declines on major U.S. equity markets, where resurfaced geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and Iran interrupted a multi-day winning streak for major American indices. He added that the relatively muted declines seen in both U.S. and Australian markets stem from a balancing act among traders: they are pricing in the new geopolitical risk while holding out hope that diplomatic negotiations will result in an extended or even permanent ceasefire agreement.

Six of the 11 tracked sectors on the ASX 200 closed in positive territory on Tuesday. Consumer staples led all gainers with a 0.67% uplift, while the energy sector was the session’s weakest performer, dropping 1.03% overall. The decline in energy stocks aligned with a recent pullback in global crude prices: Brent Crude has fallen more than 5% over the past month and dipped below the $95 per barrel threshold.

Among individual energy names, Viva Energy recovered 0.87% to close at $2.32, rebounding slightly from a steep drop in the prior session that came after a fire broke out at the company’s Geelong refinery during its first day of trading post-incident. By contrast, major oil and gas producer Woodside Energy fell 1.76% to $31.21, and competitor Santos lost 1.46% to close at $7.44.

Australia’s big four national banks delivered a mixed performance, matching the market’s overall flat tone. National Australia Bank gained 0.46% to close at $41.21, and Westpac Banking Corporation rose 0.57% to finish at $40.25, putting both in positive territory. On the losing side, Commonwealth Bank of Australia slipped 0.32% to $179.58, and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group dropped 1.71% to close at $37.28.

Some individual stocks posted strong gains on the back of positive corporate news. Vulcan Energy climbed 6.5% to $3.76 after announcing a €40 million engineering services agreement with Siemens for its planned lithium and renewable energy project. Counter-drone technology firm Droneshield rose 5.54% to close at $3.81.

On the downside, investment platform HUB24 slid 8.33% to $87.50 following the release of its third-quarter operational update. Medical technology firm 4DMedical pulled back 6.15% to $5.34 in its first session as an official constituent of the ASX 200 index. Even with the pullback, long-term shareholders in 4DMedical have little cause for concern: the stock has posted a gain of more than 1800% over the past 12 months.

Skyrocketing jet fuel costs, triggered by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz seven weeks ago, have forced Australian budget carrier Jetstar and its parent company Qantas to slash thousands of flights across Australia and New Zealand through the end of June, with New Zealand domestic routes bearing the brunt of the cuts. New data compiled by aviation industry publication AeroRoutes details the scale of the capacity cuts between May 18 and June 30, revealing stark disparities in how the reductions impact different regions. Jetstar is trimming just 2.7% of its domestic Australian flight capacity over the period, bringing total scheduled services to 10,237, while cutting 12% of its domestic New Zealand operations, dropping total flights to just 1,564 – a relative cut more than four times larger than the cuts to Australian domestic routes. The deep cuts to New Zealand domestic capacity mean local travelers will face far greater disruption than their Australian counterparts. For trans-Tasman routes connecting Australia and New Zealand, the largest reductions are concentrated on services running to and from Auckland and Christchurch, both operating out of Australia’s Gold Coast. On Australian domestic routes, two planned services have been pushed back or cancelled entirely: the scheduled June 17 resumption of Gold Coast to Darwin flights has been delayed until October, and all Sydney to Busselton (Western Australia) services are scrapped between June 1 and September 21. Across the entire seven-week cut period in Australia, most Jetstar routes see fewer than five cancelled trips per route, but domestic New Zealand sees far larger cuts to key intercity routes: 55 Auckland to Christchurch flights are axed, dropping total scheduled services to 310, and 53 Auckland to Wellington trips are removed from the schedule, leaving 142 remaining flights. Qantas, Jetstar’s parent company, has also implemented its own capacity cuts, trimming 3.6% of its total scheduled flights in the same May 18 to June 30 window. Qantas’s cuts fall most heavily on busy domestic trunk routes: 43 Brisbane to Melbourne flights, 31 Melbourne to Brisbane flights, 23 Melbourne to Adelaide flights, 27 Perth to Sydney flights, 50 Sydney to Brisbane flights, and 76 Sydney to Melbourne flights have all been cancelled. The root cause of the capacity pullback is a historic surge in jet fuel prices, that has seen costs for buyers in Asia and Oceania jump as much as 150% since the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global energy chokepoint, was closed seven weeks ago. Last week, Qantas issued a formal update to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) warning that its total fuel bill for the second half of the 2024 financial year would be between $600 million and $800 million higher than initial projections. The steep rise in fuel costs comes even as the airline group’s core profitability metric, revenue per passenger kilometre, continues to climb as carriers push through higher ticket prices to offset growing costs. Neither Jetstar nor Qantas has issued a public statement responding to questions about the new capacity cut details from AeroRoutes. The widespread cuts highlight how global energy market disruptions are directly impacting regional aviation capacity across Oceania, putting additional pressure on travelers already facing rising airfares.

When A-list celebrity Jennifer Lopez took the stage at a star-studded Indian wedding last November, few expected the highlight of the evening to be anything but her performance. But in a lavish celebration for 500 guests in Udaipur, it was a towering, meters-tall multi-tiered cake, inspired by traditional Rajasthani architecture, that captured the attention of attendees and dominated subsequent media coverage. The architect of this edible masterpiece? 34-year-old French celebrity pastry chef Bastien Blanc-Tailleur, whose custom creations occupy the same rarefied space in confectionery that haute couture holds in global fashion — one-of-a-kind, handcrafted, and accessible only to clients willing to make extraordinary investments of time and money.

Speaking to AFP from his studio just outside Paris, where five of his latest edible sculptures sat on display, Blanc-Tailleur notes that his studio rarely takes on weddings with a total cake budget under one million euros. The November wedding, which united billionaire heiress Netra Mantena and tech entrepreneur Vamsi Gadiraju, carried a total reported price tag of $6.7 million, with Lopez reportedly earning $2 million for her 30-minute set. While the chef declines to disclose exact pricing for individual projects, he confirms that his most modest custom creations start at €20,000 ($23,500), and his most elaborate signature pieces cost multiple times that entry point.

For the Udaipur event, the order included five separate cakes: the showstopping centerpiece decorated with cascading sugar orchids, hand-sculpted sugar elephants and domed pavilion structures crafted from white sugar paste, two additional cakes for the couple’s families, and two more designed to be lowered from the venue’s ceiling for display. In total, the project required an estimated 3,500 hours of labor from the team. “We probably hit the top limit of what we’re capable of,” Blanc-Tailleur says, adding that the Indian commission remains one of the projects he is most proud of.

Blanc-Tailleur’s craft draws on centuries-old French pastry traditions that date back to the 1700s, before spreading to Britain and the Americas. But his exclusive art form relies entirely on patronage from the global ultra-wealthy, including Middle Eastern royals, wealthy American heirs and European aristocrats, who all compete for his limited availability. With a full-time staff of only 10 people, his studio can produce just 20 to 25 custom cakes per year, leading to waitlists that stretch for months.

In recent months, regional geopolitical unrest has upended the carefully laid plans of many of his clients. The US-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28, which sparked widespread conflict across the Middle East, has forced dozens of couples to reschedule their events. “Lots of weddings have been pushed back to next year or the year after,” he explains. “Several clients who were going to get married in Israel or in Lebanon or in Saudi Arabia have changed and are going to get married in France instead.”

Geopolitical uncertainty is far from the only challenge Blanc-Tailleur has faced in the eight years since he launched his independent business. The 2020-2021 Covid-19 pandemic shut down large-scale events globally, forcing him to pivot to smaller projects to keep his team employed. Even in stable times, transporting his fragile, intricate creations to ultra-luxury venues across the globe carries constant risk. For the Udaipur wedding, last-minute logistical complications left the team scrambling to source fresh local eggs and butter for the cake’s base just days before the event. “Right up until the last minute we were not sure we were able to deliver the project in the best way,” he says. On another occasion, an overzealous customs official in Saudi Arabia opened the custom shock-absorbent packaging designed to protect the cake in transit, but failed to reseal the boxes properly, leaving the delicate icing damaged and requiring on-site repairs just hours before the reception.

Blanc-Tailleur’s path to becoming one of the world’s most exclusive wedding cake designers began as a teenage baking apprentice. By his late twenties, he had worked his way up to kitchen management roles at Paris’ iconic Four Seasons George V hotel, before joining the team of legendary French chef Yannick Alleno, who holds 18 Michelin stars across his global restaurant portfolio. It was from Alleno that Blanc-Tailleur says he retained his core creative philosophy: “He used to say that when you’re thinking about a project, you shouldn’t think about how you’re going to do it. Otherwise, you limit yourself in the creative process.”

True to that ethos, Blanc-Tailleur still hand-draws every design by hand on plain white card, rejecting artificial intelligence-generated designs and hyper-realistic digital renderings that he says rob clients of the joy of discovering the finished cake in person. A lifelong collector of natural curiosities and vintage trinkets — including butterflies, seashells, rough stones, and hand-carved wooden figurines sourced from flea markets across Europe — he has amassed a collection of between 2,000 and 3,000 custom molds to craft prototypes and the intricate icing decorations that define his work. Every detail is tailored to the couple’s vision: “The flowers are the bit that take the most time,” he says, with roses, orchids, and hydrangeas all built from hand-sculpted layers of icing to match the mood board provided by the wedding planner.

The demands of running his exclusive business leave Blanc-Tailleur with almost no personal time. He attends nearly every one of his clients’ weddings to oversee setup and delivery, requiring constant international travel that keeps him on the road for weeks at a time. In a rare personal aside, he confides that he has been engaged for four years, but has yet to set a date for his own wedding — fitting proof that for the world’s most in-demand luxury cake designer, serving his elite clients always comes first.

Escalating geopolitical tensions between the United States and Iran, sparked by the seizure of an Iranian vessel near the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz, sent global oil prices jumping by as much as 8% on Monday — but the move failed to lift Australian equities, which closed barely changed in a choppy session of mixed sector performance.

The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 eked out a marginal 6.4-point gain, or 0.07%, to settle at 8,953.30, while the broader All Ordinaries index added an even smaller 5.4 points, equivalent to 0.06%, to end the day at 9,174.10. The Australian dollar also posted a minor uptick, rising 0.24% to buy 71.51 U.S. cents by market close.

Across the benchmark’s 11 sectors, the day split evenly: six finished in positive territory while five closed lower. The most counterintuitive movement came from the energy sector, which led the declines despite Monday’s dramatic surge in Brent Crude prices. The global oil benchmark climbed as high as 8% intraday before settling at $95.50 U.S. ($133.30 Australian) as investors priced in growing supply risk from the disrupted Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of global oil supplies transit daily.

Major Australian energy stocks posted steep losses: Woodside Energy fell 2.93% to $31.77, Santos dropped 1.31% to $7.55, and fuel retailer Ampol slid 3.19% to $31.88. Viva Energy was an even bigger laggard, plummeting 9.09% to $2.30 after resuming trading following a major fire at its Geelong refinery the previous week.

Losses across energy were largely offset by strong gains in consumer-facing stocks and most of the financial sector. Retail giant Wesfarmers, which owns brands including Bunnings and Kmart, led consumer discretionary gains with a 2.44% jump to $74.63. Electronics retailer JB Hi-Fi added 0.55% to $76.49, and furniture chain Harvey Norman gained 0.88% to $4.61.

Among the big four banks, three closed higher: Commonwealth Bank of Australia rose 1.08% to $180.15, Westpac added 0.73% to $40.02, and ANZ nudged up 0.03% to $37.93. The outlier was National Australia Bank, which tumbled 3.60% to $41.02 after the lender disclosed it was boosting provisions for bad debt ahead of its first-half results, citing rising risk from the ongoing Middle East conflict involving the U.S., Israel and Iran. The bank now forecasts total impairment costs of up to $706 million, up from a previous projection of $485 million before the escalation of regional tensions.

Another company caught in the crossfire of Middle East uncertainty was engineering firm Worley, which dropped 5.84% to $11.13 after warning that ongoing conflict would delay operational activities and contract awards, dragging down its full-year 2026 financial outlook.

The only major standout on the day was buy now, pay later provider Zip Co, which extended a Friday rally with a 7.73% gain to $2.51 on Monday. The surge followed a bullish quarterly update released Friday that showed third-quarter cash earnings before interest and tax jumped 41.5% year-over-year, driven primarily by robust revenue growth in the U.S. market. The stock had already rallied 13.66% on Friday.

Market analysts noted that overall trading sentiment remained muted as investors adopt a wait-and-see approach to evolving geopolitical developments. “Markets are in a holding position as they await more news out of the US and Iran conflict,” said Tony Sycamore, market analyst at IG. “Either the data will break or the blockade will break. When you talk about the data breaking, we aren’t at that point although Japan, New Zealand and the UK inflation will give an indication. We also have a ceasefire coming up and I don’t think anyone thinks the ceasefire won’t be extended.”

Additional uncertainty filtered through markets following conflicting reports around planned regional peace talks: U.S. officials confirmed Vice President JD Vance would join a diplomatic delegation traveling to Pakistan for talks, but Iranian state media has already indicated Tehran will not attend the negotiations, dashing early hopes of a near-term de-escalation of tensions.

A landmark ruling from Australia’s Fair Work Commission (FWC) has mandated the nation’s largest retailers, supermarket chains, and other major businesses across manufacturing and mining to adjust road transport payment rates starting Tuesday, forcing big business to absorb soaring fuel costs that have disproportionately hit independent truck drivers and small fleet operators amid ongoing Middle East conflict-driven market volatility.

This binding order marks the first official intervention under the Albanese government’s fuel pricing amendments, which were fast-tracked through federal parliament earlier this year to address sudden global energy market shocks. Australian Workplace Relations Minister Amanda Rishworth framed the decision as a critical step toward advancing workplace fairness, noting that truck drivers should never be forced to absorb the cost of global fuel disruptions that are entirely outside of their control.

“By requiring fuel price changes to be reflected in transport rates, this order helps protect hard working truckies and small businesses from being pushed to the brink,” Rishworth said. She added that the mandate complements the government’s existing National Fuel Security Plan, which aims to mitigate fuel supply disruptions and keep essential goods moving across the country’s domestic supply chains.

The FWC built in targeted flexibility and safeguards to avoid unnecessary market disruption: the compensation requirements will automatically lapse when diesel prices drop below AU$2 per litre, and the commission will conduct a full review after the first month of implementation, with follow-up reviews every three months to confirm the order remains appropriate for current market conditions. The commission also acknowledged that existing industry-specific payment arrangements can be accommodated where they meet the core requirement of passing through fuel price adjustments.

In its published ruling, the FWC detailed the severe financial pressure that skyrocketing diesel costs, amplified by Middle East tensions between the U.S. and Iran despite a soon-to-expire ceasefire, have inflicted on owner-drivers, small fleet operators, and non-employee road transport workers. Historically, fuel costs made up 20% to 30% of total operational costs for road transport businesses; that share has now surged to between 40% and 50%, according to the commission’s findings.

“For those who have been unable to recover the increased cost of fuel (either for a period or at all), the effect has been significantly detrimental to them,” the FWC’s ruling stated. “Generally, it has seriously reduced the incomes and living standards of owner-drivers and road transport employee-like workers, with consequential effects on their families, and has affected the capacity of small fleet operators to generate any returns on their businesses. For many, it has been or will be necessary for them to ‘park their trucks’ and cease operating their businesses since otherwise they will be operating at a loss.”

The commission also warned that widespread business collapse among small road transport operators would trigger broader national supply chain disruption, reducing the industry’s overall capacity to meet the transportation needs of the entire Australian economy.

Notably, the ruling does not explicitly exclude rideshare and on-demand delivery workers for platforms such as Uber, Uber Eats and DoorDash, even though they are not named directly in the published order. The three platforms submitted formal arguments to the FWC requesting that their workers be excluded from the mandate, or that their existing temporary fuel adjustment policies be recognized as compliant. Earlier this month, Uber rolled out a temporary 5% fuel surcharge for customers to offset higher fuel costs for its drivers. The FWC also rejected procedural fairness claims from industry groups including the Australian Industry Group and NatRoad, which argued they had not been given adequate opportunity to contribute to the ruling process.